To battle against the prevailing injustices the Mechanics’ or Workingmen’s party was formed. Its chief inspiration was Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous Robert Owen. “Dale” Owen, as he was familiarly known, and others had recently returned to the city after an unsuccessful experiment at cooperative colonizing at New Harmony, Indiana, and a number of bright and ardent intellects gathered about him. Boldly declaring against the private and exclusive possession of the soil and against the hereditary transmission of property, the new party won over a large part of the laboring element. “Resolved,” ran its resolutions adopted at Military Hall, October 19, 1829, “in the opinion of this meeting, that the first appropriation of the soil of the State to private and exclusive possession was eminently and barbarously unjust. That it was substantially feudal in its character, inasmuch as those who received enormous and unequal possessions were _lords_ and those who received little or nothing were _vassals_. That hereditary transmission of wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other, has brought down to the present generation all the evils of the feudal system, and that, in our opinion, is the prime source of all our calamities.” After declaring that the Workingmen’s party would oppose all exclusive privileges, monopolies and exemptions, the resolutions proceeded: “We consider it an exclusive privilege for one portion of the community to have the _means of education in colleges_ while another is restricted to common schools, or perhaps, by extreme poverty, even deprived of the limited education to be acquired in those establishments. Our voice, therefore, shall be raised in favor of a system of education which shall be equally open to _all_, as in a real republic it should be.” The banks, too, came in for a share of the denunciation. The bankers were styled “the greatest knaves, impostors and paupers of the age.” The resolutions continued: “As banking is now conducted, the owners of the banks receive annually of the people of this State not less than two millions of dollars in their paper money (and it might as well be pewter money) for which there is and can be nothing provided for its redemption on demand.…” The Workingmen put a full ticket in the field.